February 05 2014

Welcome Letter from the President

Gary Murakami

A Message from the President

By Gary Murakami, CTC, GTP, GLP, CMP

Director, Global Sales, MGM Resorts International

To our valued members:

2014 is off to an enthusiastic and ambitious start, and I am excited you, our members, are joining us on the journey with PCMA Northern California Chapter (PCMA NCC) this year. The year brings renewed energy and optimism, as we have seen positive growth and increased business demand in the meetings and events industry.

Our goals continue to be the focus to serve our members by providing high quality educational content and networking opportunities and by increasing our visibility within the meetings industry. You, our members, through your commitment, involvement, and volunteerism have created a vital organization focused on the meetings industry for the Bay Area and in the global arena.

The end of last year concluded with our annual board retreat at the beautiful Hilton Sonoma Wine County. The idyllic setting in the Santa Rosa area proved to be the perfect venue for the new board of directors to recharge and to collaborate on our goals and efforts for 2014. With the generous support of the resort and Sonoma County Tourism, the PCMA NCC board spent a day to set the direction of how we can enhance the value of the organization to its membership.

As we begin 2014, PCMA NCC will deliver more exciting and industry-relevant programming and networking opportunities for our members. Many of us recently returned from Boston for the 2014 PCMA Convening Leaders further inspired by its innovative education and the chance to make new industry connections. In addition, many of our board participated in the chapter leadership planning session prior to the convention, where we were excited to conceptualize our chapter’s goals and thoughts for the current year that began at our board retreat.

In fact, we as a chapter leadership are inspired to bring our members the idea and theme of an "I-Community" – to build upon our individual strengths and contributions in conjunction and in alignment with the community with the spirit of partnership and collaboration in promoting the value of the meetings industry. The “I” also provided words that resonated and motivates us as a chapter board to provide value and professional enhancements for our membership to “Inspire others,are Inclusive, deliver Innovative programming, Involve our members and are Interactive”. We welcome your feedback to ensure that we support these goals throughout the year and assist in our members’ professional development.

Please mark your calendars, as we look forward to seeing you all at our upcoming meetings. Thank you for your continued support, enthusiasm and commitment to PCMA.